Mr. Zhou, the director of the Fengrui Law Firm, most recently represented Zhang Miao, a news assistant for the German newspaper Die Zeit, who was detained in Beijing for nine months and freed on July 9. Ms. Zhang had helped the newspaper cover the democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2014.

Mr. Zhou was detained on July 10. State news outlets have accused him of being at the “operational core” of a “criminal syndicate” and of recruiting protesters to put public pressure on the courts.

Last week, he was formally arrested on charges of subverting state power, according to Liu Xiaoyuan, a lawyer with knowledge of the case.

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Philippe Lopez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Wang Yu

王宇

A prison sentence on assault charges that she denied transformed Wang Yu, a former commercial lawyer, into a rights activist. She works at Zhou Shifeng’s law firm.

Her lawyer said on Wednesday that Ms. Wang had been arrested on charges of political subversion. Her husband, Bao Longjun, a trainee lawyer who worked with Ms. Wang, was charged with “inciting subversion of state power,” a slightly lighter charge also used to imprison dissidents.